Don't make me look ugly!

Graphically, the SM:M suffers from what I call "Next Geniritis." What this means to me basically is that while it does look quite sumptuous...we're still not quite clear of the old days of 32 bit graphics. And relatively speaking, compared to graphical showboats such as Jet Set Radio Future, Luigi's Mansion, and the like, Spider-Man looks kinda...cruddy. So in order to save myself a little trouble, I'll compare it to Grand Theft Auto 3 (another game that, while miles above efforts for previous consoles, doesn't seem to reach for the skies like some of the games on the new machines). So how's it look? Well, I'd say the most attractive thing about this latest installment is the manner in which Spidey is animated. All his moves have never looked smoother, whether you're performing a contortionist suplex on some unsuspecting thug, or pummeling the Green Goblin with a running flip kick. The character models are a bit dry, however. They all look presentable, but none of them look particularly sexy. Damn you Sega, if you hadn't come along with Shenmue (which made even the most incidental and pointless characters look fleshed out) I wouldn't have this crisis of faith! The environments too, are fairly 'middle of the road'. They look pretty much like they should but they lack any particular life. Especially compared to the movie, which managed to make even the most mundane places look bright and exaggerated on comic levels with Sam Raimi's masterful directing hand. So the game, graphically, is nothing particularly amazing.

YOU SUCK DANNY ELFMAN!

Unfortunately, the music here sucks. Sucks hard. While it's not quite painful to listen to, it's about some of the most bland, distinctly-not amazing music in a game I've heard in a while. It generally simply pleases itself by emulating the also distinctly indistinct (but not quite as horrible as the game's) Danny Elfman score of the movie (Editor's Note: Hey, hey - it's not THAT bad bro, I love it!). Add to that a general lack of overall tracks and well....bleach.

But in a shocking plus, this game has voice work provided but no less than TWO of the movie's actual stars! While Kirsten Dunst's chirpy cute voice is nowhere to be found (awwww) we are treated to the talents of Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker/Spider-Man and Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborn/Green Goblin. It's blessing that is a bit blemished however. Tobey gets to hit all the cool one liners he didn't have in the movie here, but his laid back voice doesn't exactly suit some of them well. He does occasionally hit a few out of the park, such as his mocking of the Shocker and commentary on the Green Goblin's "offers of brotherhood". Dafoe does as bang up a job as he did in the movie, making the Green Goblin sound as vicious as he needs to. But unfortunately, without Sam Raimi's talented hand at direction, the Goblin in the game just seems less threatening....more like a typical super villain psycho than the monster he was in the feature film. But to its credit, featuring both actors to reprise their roles in the game is a huge plus, and hopefully more Hollywood stars will find the time to lend their voices for their licensed titles.

Go Web Go!

The thing that really keeps me coming back to the game itself is the gameplay. I completely avoided the PS1 sequel to the original Spider-Man game, so I don't know if these improvements were present in it, but Spider-Man now feels less like a stilted hybrid of arcade style combat and console style exploration and more like a full fledged game in it's own right. Spider-Man has now got the mad moves, and more combo's than most so-called modern day "beat em' ups" offer you. Combine that with the already stellar web-slinging and wall crawling mechanics from the past game and you have an altogether more magically delicious package.

But perhaps the best new addition is the new aerial combat system. While not so much a system as an extra benefit of being able to lock your camera onto the enemy, the aerial combat allows you to fight the way Spider-Man was meant to--not bound by stupid old gravity, but hopping around on top of buildings and swinging like a maniac. Unfortunately, there's only a few of these sequences, and some of them are kind of contrived, but regardless it's a great addition I hope returns in future Spidey games.

Heck, Spider-Man's newly smoothed out gameplay is the main reason I'm so feverishly addicted to it. I've said it before and I'll say it again--the difference between playing a game with a lower and higher frame rate does make a difference. Combine that with the more in depth combo system, and well...actually that makes an interesting segue to talk about the Big Brawl. The Big Brawl is a sort of combat exercise found in the training room, that reminds me a lot of the X-Men Danger Room (the one in the comic book, not anything having anything to do with any of the games). In it you find a ton of various enemies for the pummeling, and if you can beat them all before the time is up, you get to move on to a bigger, more dangerous group of enemies! It's great fun.

But where this game really falters, in my view, is just the lack of love given to it. The original Spider-Man title featured a plethora of delicious extras. Covers to the comic book, hidden costumes (my love for the black Spider-Man costume should be universally known by now)...but this game is rather light there. There's a few cut CG scenes and a couple of hidden costumes (all of which suck except for the amusingly Matrix-y designs for the movie that Alex Ross did), but nothing that even comes close to the original. Granted, being able to play as the Green Goblin is pretty cool, but still...

All in all, the only real problem that this game suffers from is a lack of ambition. With it's great play mechanics, it could've been one for the history book, but the design itself was a bit...underwhelming. Not in a particularly bad way, but in a sort of lazy way. Hopefully Activision's next entry into the Spider-Man mythos will offer a bit more extra panache. I should finally be able to get past Stage 3 of the Big Brawl by then....

· · · Riisuke